


No, Honey

by cuddlesome



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Chocolate, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Menstruation, Minor Violence, Swordfighting, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 13:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11715144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome
Summary: The results of a PMSing Rey trailing and fighting Kylo on his homeworld are nicer than she expected.





	No, Honey

Anger and fear still run hotly and icily respectively through her when she thinks of him, but it’s another thing entirely to behold him. She has come to associate Kylo Ren with a sort of sickness in her guts. Thus she thinks she’s just feeling the effects of an illness when she senses his presence.

 

The port city of Salline was meant to just be a drop-off point, but then she senses him and turns her head and there he is. He sees her the same moment she sees him. The people around him melt to colorful blobs and his dark form is in sharp relief.

 

Rey readies herself for a fight, but for once Kylo is non-confrontational. He turns and leaves. She’s stunned, then pushes through the crowd after him, leaving the X-wing that the Resistance had lent to her without a second thought.

 

She keeps one hand hovered over her lightsaber. His does not stray to his side, at least not that she can tell; it stays in a tight fist.

 

Rey is acutely aware of the number of people thinning out, then buildings. The briny scent of the sea eventually gives way to the scent of flowers and green. Rey might consider stopping to admire the scenery if not for Kylo.

 

Rey follows her quarry for miles, the ink splotch of his cloak a dead giveaway in the pale pink sunset and paler green grasses of Chandrila. She feels sicker and sicker. Her stomach is in knots. His aura is monstrous enough to provoke physical pain.

 

And yet, she sees only humanity in the tired loping, in the pauses at the tops of hills to wait for her to catch up before proceeding on, in his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides to mirror the conflict she feels in her own heart.

 

Kylo turns his head, once, and the void that is his visor seems ready to swallow her up. Rey freezes and she hears Luke Skywalker’s voice in the back of her head and she wonders what the kriff she’s even doing.

 

He turns his head to face forward again and Rey can see his dark curls spilling out of the back of his helmet. Her limbs thaw and she continues to follow.

 

Rey never thought she’d see a place of darkness as somewhere of safety, but as the sun disappears beneath the horizon, the darkness is comforting. The light has started to burn as of late, started to blind. She forgot why she was ever afraid of the shadows she steps into now.

 

And then, finally, as if by some unspoken signal, Kylo turns around to face her. It’s just the two of them, as if they’re in a vision meant only for each other. The thought rings with a disturbing level of intimacy and Rey draws her weapon to dispel it.

 

“You don’t want to fight me, scavenger.”

 

“Don’t pretend to know what I want.”

 

And they end up fighting anyway, regardless as to whether or not he is right.

 

There are lightsaber burns scored across the rolling fields of Chandrila to mark Rey and Kylo’s path, wafting with the pale sweet scent of ozone and the smokier scent of char. After their wreckage of the trees and scoring of stones on Starkiller, Rey has come to expect that the scenery will always suffer during their confrontations. She is therefore unperturbed up until the point where she smells blood over the scents left by the wreckage of their fight.

 

And Rey realizes that she is bleeding again from there, the most forbidden of places. She can feel it.

 

Lorora and Quenus hang above, heavy and full with silver light, watching, judging. Rey wishes the moons were her only company. Maybe they would forgive her for not feeling the signs—the pains in her abdomen alone should have tipped her off—that her curse was going to make itself known again.

 

But no. He’s here. Because she had followed him out to the middle of scenic nowhere. It seems like Kylo Ren had to be there to witness her in one of her vulnerable moments. Only this time he doesn’t have to tear it from her mind; she all but hands it to him on a silver platter.

 

He has the high ground for the moment, standing at the crest of a hill with cape awhirl in the breeze that slides over the topmost areas of the range. His saber rumbles, hungry, ready to bite into her flesh, belying the calm of this planet.

 

Kylo tilts his head and catches twin moonlight in the browed filigree around his visor, reflecting it in a flashbulb way the grasses at their feet cannot hope to compare to. Rey can only assume the gesture is done because he can see her weakness. Blood must look harsh against the soft blue-gray of her resistance uniform.

 

She takes advantage of his distraction and tries to make a stab at him, risking having him utilize his position to burn a hole into her face (really, wouldn’t it be fair?). He parries it, but only barely, and it slides just next to his hip instead of into his gut, cradled against a quillon. The hunger of his saber seems to have been curbed, because suddenly both the sword and its owner disappear over the ridge in a single backwards leap.

 

Rey blinks hard, then her lips pull back from her teeth in a snarl as she scrambles to the top of the hill. She follows him with a jump, forcing down the cramping in her guts and the sensation of slickness between her legs. He meets her on the downswing. They crash again and again, their blades spitting pale embers.

 

Kylo begins to retreat, soon, under the fury and frustration in her blows. Rey has to increase her pace to keep after him. Her breasts feel tender as she runs, bouncing with pain lancing up and down them in her low cut shirt. The hills level out and the grasses become sand with a few stray clumps of grasses pinned to it here and there. They are headed back towards the sea. Instead of burning through the ground, a misplaced saber tip makes swaths of glass.

 

It is at one such point where Rey’s lightsaber sinks halfway into the sand that Kylo grabs her dominant wrist. The feel of his gloved hand on top of her pulse makes it jump, _badum badum badum_ —

 

Rattled, Rey yanks her arm in vain and cries out, “Let go of me!”

 

He does not. Instead he deactivates his lightsaber, clips it to his side, and reaches out to press the button to deactivate hers. Rey snarls and tries to redirect the blade to hit his hand, narrowly avoiding taking off one of his fingers. Kylo retracts his hand for a moment, then brings it back, hands spread out as if he’s trying to calm a small animal. Rey tries to plant her feet so she can reel back, but the sand keeps giving way. One of her less successful scraps on Jakku all over again, but with a bit of plant life and an ocean lapping at the sand a bit to her left. And Kylo Ren.

 

“Stop. Just stop. You’re sick. I can feel your pain,” he says, his modulated voice giving away none of his emotion, then adds, “and your anger for it.”

 

Rey tries to stop the stewing anger in her guts at that, but it’s difficult. She tries to imagine one of the techniques Luke taught her, the anger taking a physical form like water and draining away… if she imagines herself to be back on Jakku, the water disappears in the heat all the quicker. She almost feels like her aggravation is completely gone when she hears the sound of her lightsaber deactivating thanks to Kylo and it comes back full force. It’s suddenly darker with only moonlight to go by.

 

“I’m not sick,” she says, grabbing his hand with her free hand and trying to wrestle her wrist away.

 

There’s no longer the danger of slicing herself with the deactivated saber, so she puts her whole body into fighting Kylo’s brute strength. The movement for the past hour has had her limbs shaking and her stomach churning, but only now at the most ironic point does the nausea capitalize. Midway through managing to tear herself out of his grip, she gags, turns her head down, and retches. The bitter smell overwhelms all others.

 

Most of the vomit gets on the sand, but a fair amount splashes onto one of Kylo’s boots. He makes a disgusted noise and lifts the offending foot up and scuffs the toe against the sand.

 

“Oh yes,” he says, and this time definite dryness manages to penetrate through the deep, gravelly monotone of his vocoder, “you’re the picture of health.”

 

Rey takes her left hand off of where she had been attempting to extricate his hand in favor of punching him in the gut with it. Kylo doubles over and finally lets her go.

 

She wipes her mouth and chin on the back of her wrist, ignoring best she can the sudden bruising ache that has surfaced in addition to the other pains in her belly. After reactivating her lightsaber, Rey charges him.

 

Only to have Kylo take a hard step to the right. Rey overshoots him, then reels around like an angry reek for another go. She manages to clip his cape in her next wild swing and leave the fabric a bit rougher.

 

“Why won’t you fight? Are you suddenly worried about how fair it would be?”

 

“Nothing so noble.” He lays his hand flat over his lower belly. “I can feel your pain. Organs I don’t even have are hurting.”

 

“Stop being so kriffing empathetic, then.”

 

It makes her feel like she’s covered in unwashable scum to think of him feeling her insides so intimately. _Don’t be afraid, I feel it too._ The sentiment was meant to be comforting, but she’s still very much afraid. She’s so used to being alone, even after all this time, and knowing that this monster has access to her mind, her body, as if it’s part of his own, is alien.

 

If the Force is willing their intertwinement, it has a sick sense of humor.

 

Rey runs towards Kylo with her lightsaber raised once more. Before she can slash him with her lightsaber again, Kylo flings her aside with a blast of the Force, knocking her to the sand. The sand is softer than the grit on Jakku, but Rey hardly notices. She’s distracted by the fact that she can feel the wetness between her legs more distinctly, puddled on either side of her thighs. Out of embarrassment, she doesn’t look herself and presses her legs together, but she’s sure that Kylo can see the blood regardless.

 

He works the hand that he’d used to shove her, clenching and unclenching it into a fist next to where his saber hilt hangs. He’s getting upset. Good. He’s been trying to control his temper for once, but she gave up on that a while ago. She’s being irrational, she knows, but Kylo Ren has always upset her. Now, in the depths of her sickness and emotional fragility, he’s the worst person she’s ever seen and needs to die.

 

Rey skims the tip of her lightsaber across the sand next to where she lays, then throws the resulting shard of glass at Kylo with the Force. In all honesty, she expects him to redirect the flow of energy before it hits him. He doesn’t. The ragged bit of glass sails like a knife through the air thanks to Rey’s will and sinks into the meat of Kylo’s right shoulder.

 

Rey stays in that position, her hand extended from where she’d flung it outward. Kylo’s cry of pain is terrible. He reaches up and wraps his hand around the glass, cutting through his glove immediately on the edges. His blood makes it slippery, preventing him from pulling the glass from his shoulder in one swift motion. Eventually he works it out, inch by inch, but his hand and chest is a mess of cuts and fabric further blackened with blood. His red-stained fingers are shinier in the moonlight than the silver on his helmet.

 

He inspects the shard when he finally works it out of himself. “Nice trick. A little further down and you would have gotten one of my lungs.”

 

All thoughts of righteous murder have left with the spilling of her enemy’s blood. Rey is overcome with the most absurd urge to apologize. She swallows it and buries it under her vast supply of hatred for Kylo.

 

“I let you get off scot-free last time, scavenger. I could have maimed you so many times, but I held back. I don’t know why I thought you would offer the same kindness.” He mimes slashing along his shoulder, neck, cheek, and eye over his mask with the bloodied piece of glass.

 

“Kindness?” Rey spits.

 

She was convinced she was fighting for her life on Starkiller. That every move could be her last, particularly when Kylo had her up against a cliff. The fact that he entreated her to be her teacher after the hell he put her through almost made it worse.

 

Kylo tosses the glass towards the ocean. It glints in the moonlight for a split second before dropping out of view.

 

Then he asks, “Is it the mask that’s upsetting you so much?”

 

What? How can he be this dense? Rey opens her mouth to protest, but the mask is already clicking and hissing with its disengagement.

 

Kylo’s countenance, the reminder that he’s human, Han and Leia’s son, is a bit of a balm to her upset, but not by much. In its place grows something else—sadness that a man, just a normal, human man, could commit the atrocities that he has.

 

His mask hits the ground with a puff of misplaced sand that reminds Rey very much of the ashes that he’d slammed it on top of the first time he revealed himself to her. Kylo crouches down, balling his enormously tall form into something less intimidating. He folds his arms and rests them on top of his knees.

 

“Better?” He looks at her like a Force damned kath pup with its ears perked, craving and expecting attention.

 

Rey sits up and balls herself into a similar position so as to better hide the rapidly expanding bloodied spot on her crotch. “You’re the same horrible person with or without the mask.”

 

Kylo’s shoulders slump a bit and his mouth works itself into an even poutier state than usual. He’s angrier than he lets on—she can feel the Force pounding on her in waves—but much to her frustration he doesn’t lash out again. He seems to be transforming his anger into something else. His well of power, she assumes at first, but then she manages to look in his eyes for longer than a second and all she can see is compassion.

 

But why? Why give any capacity he has for compassion to her? And not to Finn? And not to his own father?

 

Kylo holds her gaze and Rey realizes she’s spoken aloud.

 

He bites his lip for a moment, considering something, then his words come out in a gush. “Because I can feel you. In my head. In my body. In my soul. Always. And if you opened up, maybe you’d feel me, too. And you’d understand—”

 

“You don’t deserve my understanding,” Rey snaps, standing up as she does.

 

For just a moment, Kylo Ren looks very small. “Maybe not.”

 

He unfurls himself, stands, and picks up his helmet. Sand clings to the edges of his dark robes, making them seem lighter.

 

“At least let me help you, scavenger,” he says, inclining his chin downward and clearly indicating the evidence of her period.

 

Rey has to resist the urge to splay a hand over it. “I don’t want your help.”

 

“No,” he says, giving her a snide look, “but you need it.”

 

He starts walking, keeping his helmet tucked under one arm. Much to her consternation, after twenty or so feet, Rey follows him again. It’s as though the Force has them connected by a string. Or a chain.

 

It’s the wee hours of the morning now. Rey is too tired and her guts hurt too much for her to try and accomplish a sneak attack. That’s what she tells herself, anyway.

 

They walk for what feels like forever. And then forever is over. And… they arrive at a kriffing beach house.  

 

“Were you coming out here for a vacation?” Rey asks as she comes to stand next to him on the archaic wooden porch.

 

Did the First Order even give vacations, much less during wartime? Hard to know with a terrorist organization-slash-cult.

 

“Meditation,” Kylo corrects. “Chandrila helps me feel relaxed, and the Supreme Leader thought it wise for me to come down from some of my emotions after… you. The Finalizer was suffering more than usual from my temper. I don’t think this was what he had in mind.”

 

After _her?_

 

“I was born here, you know,” he says as he opens the door.

 

“If I’d had anything to say about it, you would have died here, you know,” Rey says sulkily as she follows him in.

 

Kylo makes a strangled noise that Rey thinks might be a laugh and it’s a strange mixture of unnerving and amusing. If only he still had his helmet on. It probably would have sounded like a cough and she’d have thought nothing of it. But now she’s forced to confront the fact that the monster has a sense of humor.

 

He leads her to the refresher, then has the good sense to leave her alone for once. Rey doesn’t thank him, but she’s sure her gratitude to clean off shows through in the Force anyway. Her pants and underwear stick to her a little when she takes them off, further encouraging her to get into the shower unit as soon as possible. She waits until the water turns from red to pink then clears up altogether before stepping out.

 

Her dirtied clothes aren’t waiting for her when she comes out. Instead what is most certainly bits and pieces of one of Kylo’s uniforms along with a length of well-abused cloth are there. Rey considers just walking out rather than accepting the offerings, but the thought of appearing to him in the nude is far worse than in his clothes. She pulls on the pants and shirt, rolling up the cuffs on each, then stuffs the cloth between her legs. She glances at herself in the mirror. Entirely too much black for her taste.

 

Absurdly, he’s waiting with tea in the kitchen. She can see a bacta patch sticking out of the top of the low cut shirt he’s put on.

 

Rey shakes her head. “This really is your meditation retreat.”

 

“I chose one that would be good for your… condition,” Kylo says, offering her a mug.

 

“I don’t have a condition. It’s biology.” Never mind that she lived most of her adult life thinking that she was bearing the effects of a curse from some vengeful goddess on Jakku once a month.

 

Still, Rey accepts the tea, noticing in the process he’s removed his gloves, and waits for him to take a sip to assure herself it isn’t poisoned. After a few gulps she discovers it’s at a decent temperature and does indeed help calm the churning in her belly. If she shuts her eyes and allows herself to sink into the Force, she can feel the calm Kylo sought out here. And, strangely enough, much of what she can feel is suffused with light. She wonders just how much he confronts that aspect of it.

 

“Do you want some chocolate?”

 

Rey opens her eyes to see he’s already offering her some and is nibbling on a square himself. “You have a store of chocolate out here?”

 

To think she followed him out here in the first place with suspicions that he had been planning something nefarious.

 

Kylo lowers the chocolate from his mouth, frowning, and looks away. “I know, it’s childish. I shouldn’t—”

 

“I’m not judging you for liking chocolate.” Rey could reserve her judgement for other far worse things.

 

She takes the chocolate. For the sake of period cravings and nothing more. They don’t say anything else after that while they eat what Rey supposes is something like a midnight snack together. The Force is calm. Rey almost wishes they were fighting again. It would be easier to hate him.

 

She plans on just leaving after she’s finished. He may have decent hospitality skills, for a dark lord, but there’s no way she’s staying the night in the same house as him.

 

And then she realizes that Kylo Ren and the Force had led her out to the middle of nowhere and she doesn’t know how to get back to Salline. So she’s forced to accept his offer to take the bed while he rests on the couch in the other room.

 

Rey sleeps with her lightsaber clutched in her hand under her pillow. She resolves to wake early in the morning and leave as soon as possible. Like so many other things she’s planned, this does not happen.

 

She sleeps until noon.

 

Rey starts to get out of bed but stops when her foot hits something warm and alive. She looks down to see that Kylo Ren is curled up in the fetal position next to her bedside like some animal. Or maybe creature would be a more appropriate choice of word, she muses.

 

Either way, she’s a little less afraid as she looks at him in the morning light spilling through the window. It’s difficult to take him seriously with his hair askew and his usually tense body entirely relaxed.

 

It's probably just the planet. And the sunshine.

 

Even as she thinks it to reassure herself, Rey doesn't entirely believe it.


End file.
